Tag: Hepatic Stellate Cells

Scarring of the liver, otherwise known as “liver fibrosis” usually results when the liver is constantly assaulted by inflammation. Conventional treatments for liver fibrosis are usually not very effective. Therefore, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) is an attractive alternative due to their ability to suppress inflammation. Unfortunately, transplanted MSCs tend to show poor survival in the scarred liver, and they have an additional tendency to stimulate the formation of new scar tissue. These characteristics have bred skepticism among many investigators.

New work by Asok Mukhopadhyay and his colleagues from New Delhi, India has compared bone marrow (BM)-derived cells with MSCs as a treatment for liver fibrosis. They used CCl4 to induce liver fibrosis in laboratory mice. Then they treated liver-damaged mice with either BM-CD45 cells or fat-based MSCs.

Liver tests and tissue samples of both sets of mice clearly showed that the BM-CD45 cells did a much job attenuating liver scarring than did the fat derived MSCs. Interestingly, the anti-scarring capacity of the BM-CD45 cells was compromised by the presence of MSCs.

Why did the BM-CD45 cells do a better job? The bone marrow cells expressed rather high level expressions of matrix metalloproteinases. These enzymes chopped through scar tissue and also suppressed the hepatic stellate cells, which are responsible for making the scar tissue in liver. Apparently, the BM-CD45 cells induced the die off of the stellate cells. MSCs, however, released two growth factors (TGFβ and IGF-1) that are known to activate hepatic stellate cells, and promote the formation of scar tissue. As an added bonus, transplantation of CD45 cells led to functional improvement of the damaged liver, and this functional improvement seems to the result of improved liver repair and regeneration. Thus transplanted MSCs were pro-scarring while transplanted BM-CD45 cells were pro-regeneration, at least in the liver.

To summarize the results of these experiments, BM-derived CD45 cells appear to be a superior candidate for the treatment of liver fibrosis. The structural and functional improvement of CCl4-damaged livers was substantially better in animals that received transplants of BM-CD45 than those who received fat-derived MSCs.